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Introduction Despite the different tools and perspectives that the digitalization of the humanities has introduced, our need for motivation and regimentation when writing has remained constant. A digital tool of particular individual and pedagogical value is 750words.com: a site that challenges users to type at least 750 words each day and then archiving and analyzing this text through various metadata categories. The site turns writing into a gamified competition, with assigned points for reaching continued daily goals and earned badges to demonstrate sustained success in the online composition community. 750words.com uniquely poises itself as a tool for introducing digital literacy and the competency to students of all ages. Digital Humanities With respect to my knowledge of digital humanities and its application within this particular technology, I believe 750words.com fits in the definition of an encounter between traditional goals of literary, linguistic, and compositional inquiry integrated with modern technological tools that push the boundaries between self-discovery and inter-disciplinary scholarship (Reid, 2015, p. 15). Digital humanities should aim to revive the production and analysis of language and how it works in the wider context. The application of this technology directs English scholarship in a critical and engaging manner by adopting cutting edge compositional tools that calls upon audiences both inside and outside the academy (Burdick, Drucker, Lunenfeld, Presner, & Schnapp, 2012, p.4). The site founders list the ultimate goal of the site to teach users to write every day and engage in their writing in an active manner. This site calls itself a “future-ified, fun-ified translation” of the very exercises that many teachers use to engage students to write daily in the classroom. This same pedagogical philosophy is alive in 750words.com despite the change in the medium. Pedagogical Possibilities The 750words.com site is well-positioned for study within the traditional goals of literary, linguistic, and compositional inquiry integrated with modern technological tools that push the boundary between self-discovery and inter-disciplinary scholarship (Reid, 2015, p. 15). This multimodal literacy can be seen as, “the crosscutting feature that reconciles pedagogy, intellectual resources, and built world (Ala-Mutka, Punie, & Redecker, 2008, p. 255).” Through the internalization of this site, students will learn to engage in a wider learning community, which are the markets of education that must represent the needs of organization and planning in response to the implementation of technology (Rivoltella, 2008, 21-22). In order for teachers to truly prepare their students to learn and apply the skills for the wider learning community, they must accept the application of new media within the field of English and prepare students to understand the compositional differences between writing in print and on a computer (Boler, 2003, p.26). With these skills in hand, students will be able to use information in a more coherent way in digital space (Secker, 2013, p. 29). Digital humanities should aim to revive the production and analysis of language and how it works in the wider context. In the words of Carter, Jones, and Hamcumpai (2015), “If you aren’t building, you aren’t a digital humanist (p. 41).” In the ‘About Me’ section of the site, the webmaster communicates a similar thought: “In the past, looking for a spare notebook was probably easier than looking for a computer. Not anymore. I don’t know if my hands even work anymore with pen and paper for any task longer than signing a check or credit card receipt.” Understanding the shifting mediums of production, 750words.com brings accessibility to production and publishing in a way that takes media from a point of consumption to one of production (Botler, 2003, p.27). Integrating writing into a moderated, reinforced, socially engaging, and self-critical mode is difficult to introduce and implement without a site such as this one, and through these digital implementations, writers are able to produce more and learn to navigate writing in a user-friendly digital interface. Like other software and websites utilized in Digital Humanities, this site “opens up questions of composition and meaning making that reach beyond the concerns of any one academic discipline (Brown, 2015, p. 29).” With the implementation of multimedia applications in the classroom, students are called to interact not only with the material, but also with each other. This leads to more active and engaged learning that has an applied purpose outside of the confines of the classroom (Rivoltella, 2008, p.92). Digital Interfaces This technology presents writing in a delineated context. Void of distractions, with only a white screen and limited stylistic control of thee output, writers need not even construct a title before writing. In the FAQ section, the webmasters justify this choice by asserting that formatting “gets in the way of just writing.” The awareness that a student brings in reflection to their interaction with the form and content of the electronic media is an integral skills set called critical literacy (Warnick, 2002, p. 6). As established in Eyman and Ball’s article on electronic publication (2015), all interfaces are rooted in political, social, and technological choices that impact the content (pp 70). The interface between the site creator and the community appears to be a strong. Reflective of trends in new media, as 750words.com has progressed and grown as a site, it has also expounded its content, application, and connectivity into an innovative kind of transparency (Warnick, 2002, 10). Users are encouraged to submit their suggestions for improving the site through the satisfaction and feedback page. There is also an open-sourced feed where users are able to discuss their problems with the site and offer quick fixes within the community. Features of the Site This site lends itself to elements of gameification through the points and badges that are awarded when a writer reaches their goals consistently. These badges are visible on each user’s profile, but outside of the confines of the site, they have no exterior value. However, according to users of the site, these badges help users take their writing less seriously and give them an objective for reaching their goals. A penguin badge, for instance, is awarded when a writer uses the site five days in a row. Other badges are available for quick, uninterrupted writing and for completing the One Month Challenge. Of this reward system, the site manager comments that the points and badges may serve as an initial motivation, but eventually the joy of writing will take over, and no external motivation will be needed. This is a feature that serves as reinforcement for writers to fully utilize the site, especially significant when considered for its pedagogical value. For those with limited experience with digital computing, this site is void of many complicated features and formatting options. Most of the interfacing is ubiquitous, such as the automatic save function on the site where there is force-save every ten seconds. There is only one keyboard shortcut on the site, which is a command/control-s to save work. The limitation of shortcuts means that the site serves as an intuitive, easy-to-use space where writers can focus on what they write and on becoming more comfortable with digital computing in a basic sense. This makes it a great starting place for students to learn about digital writing and creation in a digital space. This technology, in particular, is accessible to writers of all age, technology proficiency, and performance level. The goal is production, creative engagement, and self-awareness as a writer. In this respect, another fascinating element of this site is the self-analytical statistical outputs that are compiled both daily and over a span of time. This relates to the idea of “no interpretation without production; no production without interpretation”, bringing forth a kind of analysis of one’s own writing that would be impossible without this digital tool (Brown, 2015, p.30). Users of 750words.com are able to better understand their own writing process through tracking the number of words that they type and viewing graphs that depict how quickly and consistently they write. Writers are better able to understand their times of top productivity during the day and respond accordingly. With this accessible format, users are able to circumvent notions that with the high productivity of the web, we have overstepped our ability to catalog, analyze, and archive our own writing (Burdick et al., 2012, p.37). Through a site such as 750words.com, we are able re-conceptualize publishing not as an endpoint of research, but rather as a step in experimentation and research (Burdick et al., 2012, p. 89). This site, which provides information on their statistical models and algorithms for analysis, assigns each entry a rating, analyzes the overall feelings and time orientation of the text, and also categorizes the main subject matter of the passage. 750words.com also performs a word count analysis and provides a cloud diagram to show which words are used most frequently. The self-awareness that is presented through the analytic metadata might familiarize students not only to trends in their emerging writing, but also how quantitative analysis may be a successful tool as a research application. The tracking of metadata on the site presents a straight-forward, automatic experience of digital computing tools in action. The significance of the words that the user types is considered automatically, and through this, students will be able to understand the greater context of their writing. Understanding how they write, in terms of the speed and the breaks they take, will familiarize students with what works best for them to produce strong, effective writing. The system for emotional text analysis that the site uses is called the Regressive Imagery Dictionary. Although the details of this system are not revealed publically, site founders comment that it is fairly simple, which means that it is necessarily completely accurate. Growing up in a highly interactive social media generation, students of today have grown accustomed to interfacing between social media sites and sharing content on multiple platforms with the click of a button. The implementation of digital tools employing social uses opens up new ways to retool how we envision tools and the boundaries of interaction in digital spaces (Rivoltella, 2008, p.243). 750words.com utilizes this philosophy by extending the site into interaction with other social media spheres such as an option to share daily statistics with other users on the site and also for posting on either Facebook or Twitter. Daily statistics may also be shared online automatically each day. Implementing tenants of rapid speed and networking that have changed the way that we build out realities, entries themselves may also be exported to share (Rivoltella, 2008, 1). Conclusions Writers may utilize this technology to improve our compositional technique, understand more about the way we produce and analyze our own texts, and engage in a wider network of supporters. The site also holds users individually accountable for their writing and lets users more deeply consider the implications of the words that we produce. Posts may be easily printed or published on other platforms, making it an interactive matrix that allows writers to share and revise what they write. This fulfills the tenets of Digital Humanities that utilize technology for wider collaboration and connection (Burdick et al., 2012, p. 24). In this regards, writers are able to differentiate between writing for a larger audience, traditional blogging and status updating and producing content only for themselves. A digital tool like 750words.com can still be considered within the traditional parameters of learning models, and can most comprehensively be viewed as a behaviorist learning technique. This is the “doing” school of thought, as can be viewed through the gameification feedback behaviors that ensures writing is positively reinforced on the site, and therefore will be repeated. The experience of writing, the basis of Digital Humanities, competency, and literacy, will become a positive one that will not be associated with the traditional form of the classroom. The learner is highly engaged in hands-on, active learning (Kaplowitx, 2008, p.27). In an ever individualizing society, each student will also be able to work at his or her pace. With immediate feedback, they will be able to fully engage with their writing and learn from their experience in a near-instant manner (Kaplowitx, 2008, p. 28). Ultimately, engaging in practices with 750words.com, users will harbor skills of digital literacy and computing that will extend outside of the classroom and into necessary skills in today’s workforce (Rivoltella, 2008, p. 86). Ultimately, this site helps produce a smarter computing culture, a hallmark goal of Digital Humanities and a necessary skill for students regardless of the career path that they ultimately will follow (Brooks, Lindgren, & Warner, 2015, 226). Through mainstream understanding of what a computer is and how it can contribute to personal creativity and interplay in larger literary discourse, 750words.com is a worthy interactive tool for active consumption, participation, and academic study. Category:Eng460 Category:750words.com Category:Digital Interfaces Category:Digital Humanities Category:Digital Publishing Category:Digital Literacies